If
you need a heart surgery but don't have medical insurance and can't afford
the tens of thousands of dollars out-of-pocket bill, India may have the
solution for you: heart surgery for $800.

Indian cardiac surgeon Devi Prasad Shetty built a "no-frills"
Narayana Hrudayalaya clinic in Mysore, southern India, at a fraction
of the cost of building equivalent hospitals in the West, and pass on
the savings to his patients:

Air-conditioning is restricted to operating theatres and intensive
care units. Ventilation comes from large windows on the wards.

Relatives or friends visiting in-patients undergo a four-hour nursing
course and are expected to change bandages and do other simple tasks.

In its architecture, Shetty rejected the generic multi-storey model,
which requires costly foundations and steel reinforcements as well as
lifts and complex fire safety equipment.

Much of the building was pre-fabricated off site and then quickly assembled.
[...]

By running the operating theatres from early morning to late at night,
six days a week, it is inspired by low-cost airlines which keep their
planes in the air as much as possible.

The British-trained surgeon sniffs at the output of Western counterparts
who might do a handful of operations a week. Each of his surgeons does
up to four a day on a fraction of the wages of those in the West.